Land use change and wetland loss have decreased the ability of estuaries to mitigate storm damage and reduce flooding in Wisconsin’s Douglas County. The loss of these valuable services was apparent in the aftermath of severe storm events that caused significant flooding and damage in 2012. And, as the climate shifts, the region is likely to experience more frequent powerful storms. Strategic wetland protection and restoration planning could help communities work together in protecting wetlands and the services they provide.

Healthy estuaries are vital to the economy of the Texas central coast, supporting the region’s multibillion-dollar fishing industry and growing tourist trade. Adequate supplies of freshwater are key to the productivity of these estuaries. However, as the regional population grew and the recent drought deepened, estuaries were receiving less freshwater.

This project is a collaboration between scientists and end users to develop decision-support tools for marsh hydrological management strategies that promote sustainability and delivery of valuable ecosystem services under future sea level scenarios.

Understanding why estuarine habitat restoration is viewed as successful or not is critical for evaluating completed projects and garnering support for future projects. Particularly important, and often overlooked, are the perceptions of partners and the surrounding community which play an integral role in shaping the future of coastal habitats. Restoration metrics rarely include human dimensions even though community support for restoration can promote or thwart potential projects and the long-term success of completed projects. Working with the South Slough NERR, this catalyst project worked to more fully account for and understand the impacts of estuarine habitat restoration by developing social metrics for restoration success and linking them to ecological monitoring metrics. Using South Slough NERR, The Wetlands Conservancy, and other restoration projects in Oregon as case studies, the project involved a two-pronged approach to data collection: 1) synthesis of existing and newly collected ecological data from nine salt marsh restoration projects to derive commonly used ecological metrics and 2) focus groups in three Oregon locations (South Slough, Alsea, and Yaquina) to understand public perceptions about marshes. The team then connected the social and ecological datasets conceptually to create a matrix linking the datasets and indicating mismatches between ecological data and social values. Based on these steps, the team was able to provide recommendations to help improve restoration design and implementation, including more inclusive and effective communications surrounding estuarine restoration.

Myrtle Beach is an economic pearl in South Carolina’s grand strand, a sixty-mile stretch of beaches and resort communities that support a multi-billion dollar tourism industry. Fishing and water sports top the list of local attractions, making coastal water quality a priority concern. Addressing that concern, however, is a challenge along this heavily developed coast, where much of the polluted stormwater runoff flows into “swashes,” or tidal creeks that traverse beaches to connect directly to the ocean. To manage stormwater in a way that protects water quality, local decision makers need more information about the role that these swashes play in fueling hypoxia, or low levels of dissolved oxygen, in coastal waters.

Several reserves collaborated to develop the Climate Change Vulnerability Assessment Tool for Coastal Habitats. The tool helps decision makers evaluate a habitat’s vulnerability to climate change and prioritize it for conservation or restoration. South Carolina’s North Inlet-Winyah Bay Reserve and the Chesapeake Bay Virginia Reserve worked with local partners to refine and pilot this tool and share it with the national reserve system.

Under the National Fish Habitat Partnership, scientists at the NEFSC, NWFSC, and Silver Spring Headquarters are compiling information on the nation's estuarine and coastal habitats and the species they support in order to assess their current potential for restoration and protection. National project headed up by F/ST. Jihong Dai documents InPort metadata. Geographic data on the nation's coasts and estuaries.

By engaging 30 reserves from across the country in habitat mapping, this project highlighted differing trends among regions and estuarine habitat types. Working with local and national end users, including the NERRs and a variety of organizations interested in understanding estuarine habitat change, the project built a shared understanding of trajectories of change to design and build support for future restoration strategies. The habitat mapping included the following two components conducted at each of 30 reserves: 1) Elevation-based mapping, using NOAA-generated elevation models and tidal datums to estimate the potential extent of the estuary, and identify areas no longer subject to tidal influence that could be restored in the future, and 2) Historical mapping, using the oldest T-sheet (topographic map) or Lake Survey map to examine extent and distribution of habitats in one smaller area of interest on/near each reserve, and document how that has changed over time. The project generated various products for each of the 30 reserves: technical reports detailing findings, historical maps available as raw image files, and geodatabases in local coordinates with both elevation-based and historical mapping analyses.

Stormwater pollution is the number one threat to coastal water quality in North Carolina, where it contributes to beach closures, impacts tourism, and interrupts shellfish harvests. Rapid urbanization, population growth, and a shifting climate have all converged to make it increasingly difficult for the state’s communities to reduce the volume of stormwater washing over th landscape and protect water quality. Excess runoff also leads to street flooding that ranges from being a nuisance to a danger to public safety.